Let The House Absorb The Blame
by altschmerz
Summary: When a case goes wrong, Neal ends up drugged, confused, and he does the only thing he can - he runs. What he doesn't know is where he's run to, and why he's so reluctant to leave. Which is how Peter finds his missing CI, passed out on the floor of his own living room. (winter whump exchange fic for nywcgirl)


_had a great time participating in this exchange, thanks to those running it for making it happen! please excuse my complete bs'ing of anything resembling medical or procedural accuracy and drop me a line if you liked it!_

 _title from catie rosemurgy's 'america talks to me like a mother', for the prompt from nywcgirl "When you wake up, you're safe", with a confused, drugged character._

* * *

Neal is in trouble.

If it were ordinary trouble, his heart would be pounding in his chest, slamming a hummingbird beat against the inside of his ribcage. But this isn't ordinary trouble. This is trouble that came about thanks to coffee just slightly too bitter, the faint clink of ceramic in the three seconds his back was turned. So his heart, loud and ominous inside his skull, is slow and tired. All he wants to do is sleep, but he can't, because he's in trouble. He knows he is, because he ran.

Neal is not supposed to run. There's not a lot he knows right now - his mind is a kaleidoscope whirl of nauseating input, jumping from one seemingly random memory, an image or a sound bite, to the next, he may not know what day it is or how he got here but this much he knows. Running is bad, running is 'you let me down', running is losing his safe place to land. Safe place to land… He could use one of those right now. But he's run, and so he's alone, and he's…

Where is he? Neal frowns, making a cursory attempt at figuring out just where exactly he is. His eyes blur and the world tilts when he turns his head, and he throws out a hand, catching his balance against the wall. His other hand rises, pinching at the bridge of his nose as he groans and sways. It takes several long, unsteady moments for the room to stop careening around like a carnival ride, for the floor to still under his feet and the wall to cease being the only solid anchor point.

"Not on a boat…" Neal says a little too loud for his own ears, then stops, because really, is he sure? Is he _sure_ he isn't on a boat, because he still hasn't worked out where he is.

Splaying his fingers out over the wall, getting as firm a grip as he can on the one location that _hasn't moved_ , Neal squints around himself. It doesn't really look… boat-y. The room is… A room. There's walls. A floor. Furniture. There's a couch and bookshelves and a coffee table, a smiling man and woman in pictures on the walls.

"Super not a boat," he confirms to himself, though he still can't identify _where_ the room is located, what building it carves its space within. It comes in waves and leaves just as quickly, his cognizance of his surroundings. Those pictures, there's something familiar about them, but it slips from his grasp the moment Neal looks away. He knows who those people are, and with that why he came here, where here is, but then his eyes drift, and it's gone again. He's not on a boat, though, that's for sure, so he clings to that, even as the floor pitches like the swelling waves of an angry ocean.

There's a nagging feeling at the back of Neal's brain, like a burr stuck under the collar of his shirt, something bigger, broader than the immediate question of what, where this not-boat is. He should be moving still. He wasn't supposed to run, and now he's in trouble, and Peter's going to be so mad (so disappointed), but he should still be running. If he's already pulled the trigger, already messed up this bad, he should commit, should get far enough that he'll be safe, that the woman with the pristine blond hair and the flat-black shark eyes (and the ring that had made a sound he _should_ have noticed when she disturbed his coffee mug the _three_ _seconds_ his eyes were off it) can't get to him again.

Neal's in trouble because he ran but the deed is done so he should keep running, right. A rolling stone gathers no moss, a rolling fugitive gathers no bullet-holes, it's the same basic principle. He should run- keep running. But still when he moves, tries to stray from this wall, the last bastion of solid ground, something in Neal tells him to stay put. His feet feel rooted to the ground, his palm grown into the paint of the wall. That last thought is one that takes hold and unsettles him, prompting Neal to pull away, if only to prove he hasn't actually melted right into the drywall.

"Nope," he mutters, staring at his own hand. It zooms in and out of focus, wobbling out into three hands, then back into one when he blinks hard. "Nope, nope…" The words morph into humming, a tune from some commercial he'd heard he could've sworn four times the other day in Peter's car, on the way home from work. Neal's still staring at his own hand, making sure that it's where it's supposed to be, when the floor gives another sudden heave and he loses his balance.

The floor is not kind when it receives him. Neal lays there dazed - more dazed, anyway - and stares at the ceiling, while the floor tilts under his now-bruised back, and tries to remember what he was doing here. He ran. Why did he run?

 _The case, undercover, just twenty minutes Peter said, and then the cup, he heard her ring against the cup, why didn't he-_

Peter's going to be so mad. Peter's going to be mad, and _disappointed_ , and Neal's gonna have to see that look on his face, the one that always means Peter expected better from him and didn't get it. Neal should just keep running. That way he's safe, and he doesn't have to see how Peter's going to look at him when he finally…

"Peter always finds me," Neal tells no one. His hands are jammed down at his sides against the floor, pushing like he can force the ground to stop rippling by his own efforts. Maybe when Peter gets here, he'll make the floor stop moving before he sends Neal somewhere far away. Maybe he'll give Neal the chance to explain first, too, that he only ran because he knew if he didn't, he'd probably die, and Neal didn't want to die.

"There were guns," he says, to the imagined shadow of Peter, standing in the doorway of this room he still can't quite identify. "I didn't want to die, Peter."

Imaginary Peter doesn't answer. The room spins and spins around him until it goes dark.

* * *

Neal is in trouble.

Peter knows he's in trouble from the instant the easy, smooth words coming from the other end of the comms start slowing, running into each other and stumbling. Everything had been going fine until then. It never sets Peter at ease to send Neal undercover, but it was supposed to be easy. They hadn't known about the two other people at the meet, overseeing what was supposed to just be coffee. Just Neal and the suspect, and it was all going fine, until it all went so, so sideways.

His words began to slur, grow disorganized, and he didn't respond when Peter attempted to contact him from the van. Neal either ignored the voice in his earpiece or had removed it entirely, and that's enough for Peter to call it all off and send his team down on the location. The story becomes clear three arrests, three confiscated guns, and one overturned coffee mug later.

There had been something in that mug, Neal was drugged, and now he's in the wind somewhere, disappeared into the city before they could get to him. That was hours ago, and they've had no luck locating him, Peter's team spread across the city, the anklet useless in the van. It was only supposed to be off for twenty minutes, half an hour at most, while they got what they needed from their target, but twenty minutes was enough, and now he's gone.

The fact that it's Diana who suggests it before Peter can think of it himself is not one of his prouder moments. He's clicking through surveillance stills when she walks up to him and asks, "Have you checked your house?"

Peter blinks at her, and Diana elaborates.

"We've been raking the city for Caffrey, have you sent anyone to your place to check? All I'm saying is, if I'm drugged and feel like I'm in danger, I'm gonna go somewhere I feel safe."

Without a word, Peter grabs his jacket and takes off. The entire drive there he's telling himself not to get his hopes up, that the likelihood of finding Neal that easily, safe and in one piece at Peter's house, is low. It won't be that easy. It's never that easy. Neal's too good at running, has had too much practice, and not nearly the presence of mind necessary to know he didn't need to. Lab analysis won't be back for a couple of hours, but Neal was dosed with something, and that's not a series of events they have a positive track record with.

All of this is playing on a loop when Peter eases the door open, calling out, "Neal?"

He's not hopeful. He's not hopeful. The sooner he checks this out the sooner he can get back out there looking for Neal, who could still be-

Flat on his back on Peter's living room floor.

"Oh my god, Neal," Peter says under his breath, rushing across the last few feet and dropping to one knee next to the sprawled form. His hand hovers for a second before settling on Neal's chest, palm flat over his sternum. The rise and fall of his breathing is shallow and slow but present and steady. Peter raises his voice a little, saying clearly, "Neal. Buddy, I need you to wake up."

There's a slight stir, a hitch under Peter's hand.

"That's it, come on. Wake up and talk to me," he coaxes, giving Neal a light shake. Neal's face scrunches into a frown, his head rolling to the side. There's no bruising visible, nothing to indicate he's passed out from anything other than the drug, which is a small relief, but a relief nonetheless.

Peter's phone buzzes in his pocket and he takes a brief, distracted second to fish it out and answer, "Yeah, Diana, he's here. I got him." He listens for a moment. "No, he's- hang on, he's waking up, I'll call you back."

Sure enough, Neal's eyes are open now, blinking up at Peter in a half-lucid haze. His pupils are blown wide and his focus is unsteady, but he's awake.

"Neal?" Peter repeats, and Neal frowns harder.

"Peter?" The name comes out hoarse and confused. "Peter, 's that, are you, uh… Um, the word, 's, like, loose, lose-"

"I'm not a hallucination, Neal."

"Not?"

This would be funny if it wasn't so unnerving.

"I'm totally real, I promise," Peter says, attempting to reassure him. His hand stays put on Neal's chest, hoping the steady contact will keep him calm and grounded. "Are you hurt?"

"Mmmm…" Neal hums, head rolling the other way, squinting back up at Peter. "Hm-m. No. 'S all spin- It's spinning."

"What's spinning, Neal, the room? Are you dizzy?"

"'M _not_ on a boat, Peter," the disoriented young man says very seriously, and Peter almost laughs. The relief of finding him in one piece, evidently no more hurt than he'd been when they last saw him, it feels like carbonation in his chest.

"No, you're not on a boat. Can you sit up for me?"

Neal moves like he might actually be on a boat, swaying and unsteady under Peter's guiding hands. He looks around, face falling back into confusion.

"Where…" His hand comes up, waving around until it latches onto Peter's sleeve, careful fingers rendered clumsy as they dig into his forearm. After a moment his grip tightens and his focus flashes back to Peter. There confusion is gone, and in its place is dismay. "Peter. Peter I ran."

 _Ah, geez_. "It's okay," Peter says quickly, trying to head this off at the pass.

"I had to get somewhere safe, and I…" He's looking around again, breathing picking up pace. "Where am I? Did I- I ran, I had to, I gotta get somewhere they can't-"

"Hey!" Peter feels bad for the sharp edge to his tone when Neal flinches, but he had to get his attention somehow. "Hey, it's okay. You're safe. You're at me and El's house, it's just you and me here. I'm not mad at you, nobody's mad at you."

"Your house?" Neal is shaking. Peter can feel it. "I'm not… I _ran_."

"It's okay. We can sort all that out later." _When you're capable of understanding more than every third word, or retaining any of this._ "Right now, we're gonna get you on the couch, so you can sleep the rest of this off. Okay?"

Neal sways a little, looking down and nodding. His shoulders heave once, a steadying breath. Peter runs a hand across his back briskly, trying to keep him focused, and waits for a verbal answer. After not getting one for several long moments, he tries again.

"Okay, Neal?"

This time, Neal nods again, and speaks. "'Kay."

With careful movements, resolving to call nine-one-one if it seems for a moment like he's getting worse, Peter helps Neal over to the couch, leading him to lay across it like he has on countless prior occasions. He pulls a throw blanket over Neal's body, then leans back and perches on the edge of the coffee table. Neal still isn't letting himself rest, blinking startled blue eyes abruptly open every few seconds, and Peter sighs.

"Go to sleep, Neal."

"I'm sorry I ran," Neal mumbles into the fabric of the couch cushion. "I had to…"

"I know. I'm not mad." It was easier to deal with this when Neal was babbling about boats, and mispronouncing 'hallucination', before he started apologizing for running, when he hadn't even run _away_. He'd run straight to Peter, exactly what he was supposed to do, and here he is apologizing anyway. Peter regards him sadly and reaches out, laying a hand over Neal's hair in a mirror of that day in the doctor's office, on the case with June's granddaughter and her kidney. Another time when Neal had been out of his mind and it all went from amusing to a knife in the gut just as quickly. "We'll figure this all out when you wake up. You're safe, it's okay."

The clock on the wall ticks loudly in the silence that's fallen since Neal's eyes closed again, and Peter tries to use it like a metronome, even his breaths and slow his heartbeat. Neal is here. He's safe. He's in one piece. Peter sits on the coffee table pulled close to the couch, hand resting on top of Neal's head, and tries to focus on that.


End file.
